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  Rain of Terror

  ( The Destroyer - 75 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  Chicken Little was Right!

  Well, maybe the sky wasn't falling-but something was falling from the sky. Something that stunned America's scientists, stupefied America's security forces, and sent the new U.S. President miles underground to dodge the hellish hailstorm of unidentified falling objects.

  What was this infernal armada of UFO's? And who could stop it as it shattered one city after another? The only answer in America's arsenal was Remo and Chiun-as they shot into action against a mad dictator who stopped at nothing and a smart computer than knew all the answers..including the secret of how to outwit the wise and wily Chiun and destroy the indestructible Destroyer.

  Destroyer 75: Rain of Terror

  By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

  Introduction

  "For an attic on Garfield Avenue and bologna sandwiches on cheap white bread and Pathmark gin and rolling inner tubes across backyard pools ... when all the world made sense and even dreams had right sizes."

  That was Dick Sapir being nostalgic in a Destroyer dedication a couple or three dozen books back. And why not a little nostalgia? We had written a book that nobody would buy for eight years and then we were "overnight" successes. Nostalg away, Dick. You earned it.

  And now Destroyer Number 75.

  Seventy-five books in seventeen years. Almost five million published words. And still at it, still trying to get it right.

  Five million words. Maybe you'll understand better how many that is if you remember that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about five per cent that many about Sherlock Holmes before he got tired of him and tried to kill him off.

  Five million words. As many memories. As many laughs. This wasn't one of them: "Before tackling a novel you ought to try writing short stories." That was the first agent we sent the Destroyer manuscript to.

  And the second agent. This genius, after cashing our check for reading fees, suggested we end the book by killing off the hero, Remo Williams. "You wrote this like a series book," he told us, "and nobody publishes series books."

  Nothing's more stupid than the conventional wisdom, so we sat on the sidelines and waited and eight years later, in 1971, got published-thanks to Dick's father, the dentist, and a publishing secretary with papier-mache teeth-and after our series had sold its first million copies, Sapir sent both agents a telegram-ten years later now-and said, "Go to hell." He never forgot; he never forgave.

  Five million words. About one argument every million words.

  One screamer. In Destroyer 5, Dr. Quake, Sapir kills Chiun, the old Oriental assassin around whom the series revolves.

  "Can't do this," Murphy says. "Can't kill Chiun."

  "It's a great scene," Sapir says. "Why can't I kill him?"

  "Because everybody will stop reading the books and we'll have to go back to work at the car wash."

  "Well, if you're going to nitpick everything I try to do . . ." Sapir says.

  Chiun survived. So did the books. In America. Then in Europe. Eventually all over the world. Twelve languages. Twenty-five million copies.

  Five million words.

  A telegram arrives. It reads: "Murphy, you're done. Partnership is over. Contact my lawyer. Richard Sapir." An hour later, another telegram. "Dear Warren. Ignore previous telegram. Some dastard has stolen my Western Union credit card and is offending all the people I hold most dear. Your friend, Dick."

  It was never brought up again. Never knew what it was about.

  Five million words.

  Sometimes it's good not to think too much about what you're doing and just go ahead and do it.

  If we knew that what we were writing was a satire on the whole men's adventure genre, maybe we would have started taking ourselves seriously.

  And then maybe we would have missed out on seizing that radio station the day Dick bought the bad gin and we got away with doing fifteen minutes of Radio Free Hoboken until they got the door open and threw us out.

  Maybe if we had known we were promulgating one of the most enduring myths in all pop fiction-the brash young Westerner trained in the secret arts by a wily aged Oriental-maybe it would not have been so much fun. Maybe we couldn't have kept boa constrictors in that ratty hotel room in Jersey City or thrown pizza dough at the opera singer.

  Five million words and maybe if we had thought they were important, maybe we wouldn't have overturned the boat and had to swim for it. Maybe Dick would remember where and when he totalled Murphy's new car before delivering it back with two flat tires, a ripped-off door and a red presentation ribbon on the hood.

  Maybe we never would have had that football game in the hotel hallway in Atlantic City.

  Maybe we wouldn't have liked each other.

  But it was a long time ago and we didn't know any better and dreams still had right sizes.

  Five million words. Seventy-five books. Not as good as we wanted, because nothing ever is, but a lot better than those early covers would lead you to believe.

  Sapir went off on a separate career and wrote a handful of wonderful, enduring books, like The Far Arena, The Body, Quest, masterworks of myth that belatedly started to get him the critical attention something called The Destroyer series never could.

  But he never gave up The Destroyer, and in many of these books are a lot of people he met and liked and a lot more he met and hated and things he appreciated and things that annoyed him, including, often, his partner.

  Five million words and now book number 75. And not so much fun anymore.

  Richard Ben Sapir died in January 1987, in the sunny afternoon of his life, in full control of his wonderful talent; in the warm surrounds of his loving family and friends. A lot of words have been written about him since then, some look-Ma-I'm-writing encomiums from people whose warm words would have been appreciated more while he was living.

  But he never needed anybody else's words and he still doesn't, even in a valedictory. In a big piece of almost five million words he wrote his own.

  Asked once how he could equate his career as a serious novelist with his other career doing The Destroyer, Dick Sapir said: "The Destroyer is what it is. It is good. And that's enough. There are not many good things in this world and Warren and I are part of one."

  Amen, brother. We keep trying.

  -Warren Murphy

  Chapter 1

  Captain Claiborne Grimm was not at his command post when the Sonalert started beeping.

  Although he was missile warning and control officer at the PAVE PAWS radar tower at the far end of Georgia's Robbins Air Force Base, national security did not preclude a trip to the john. And there was nothing in Air Force regs about bringing along a book to pass the time.

  There was a lot of time to pass in the ten-story PAVE PAWS complex. Especially at three o'clock in the morning with an unheeding moon silvering the wedge-shaped blue building. The entire structure was run by computer. From the Modcomp system steering the phased array of 2,677 radiating elements that were shielded behind the building's eastern face to the twin CDC Cyber 174 data processors, there was little need for human beings at the console screens.

  One of four identical sites scattered throughout the United States, the PAVE PAWS radar system's primary task was to detect the launching of submarine-based ballistic missiles. It was the last line of detection in the event of global war. Conventional wisdom had it that World War III would begin with massive land-based launches targeted at opposing land-based launch sites. NORAD's Spacetrack satellite system was responsible for detecting those first-strike launchings. If anyone survived to give orders for a second strike, America's submarine flee
t would presumably still be intact to discharge that mission. By that time, Captain Grimm reasoned, the PAVE PAWS network designed to detect enemy submarine launchings would be so many floating particles-and never mind the Pentagon's crap about survivable mission-critical circuits.

  So when the alarm beeped, warning of a possible submarine launch, Captain Grimm turned the page of his book. He was at a really good part. The blond with the big knockers was about to go down on the hero. Besides, the system had probably just picked up another satellite decaying out of orbit. But because he was a trained Air Force officer, Grimm kept an ear cocked for the status officer to hit the reset button, indicating a nonthreat situation.

  When the beeper finally cut out, Grimm relaxed.

  Then from the tactical operations room came a fearful cry.

  "An event, sir!"

  Captain Grimrn stumbled out of the john, his feet tripping over his lowered trousers. He did not pull them up even after he found his post among the bank of six consoles. If this was real, there would be less than fifteen minutes from launch to impact.

  Grimm shot a hard glance at the Global Display screen. Outlined in luminous green was the continental United States, centered between Europe and Asia.

  Over the black space that represented the Atlantic Ocean floated a green tracking symbol that he'd seen only in training exercises. A glowing letter U. The U stood for "Unknown."

  "Satellite?" he demanded of the status officer.

  "The software says no."

  "Then it's gotta be an air-breather."

  "Negative, sir. Software confirms that it's not a conventional aircraft."

  "Can't you-I mean it-identify it?" Captain Grimm shouted.

  "Mission software refuses to sort it, sir!" the status officer, a lieutenant, said sharply.

  Still in his shorts, Captain Grimm got behind a second console. According to his Global Display, the unknown object was approaching the apogee of its trajectory. He touched the glowing U with his lightpen and hit a console key. The U was magnified by a factor of two. Tiny jaggededged boxes suddenly became visible as they flew off from the U symbol.

  "It's shedding fragments," Captain Grimm said in a relieved voice. "It may be breaking up." But then he saw the speed of the thing. It was very fast. Faster than any known missile.

  "It should be dropping its final stage at this point," the lieutenant said worriedly.

  "No," Captain Grimm said. "No stages. Nothing."

  "It has to. Maybe you're reading a tank box for a fragment. "

  Hitting a key, Captain Grimm deleted the fragments from the display. Only the U symbol remained.

  "Damn," said the lieutenant, fervently cursing the automated system that made the operator as redundant as the backup console. "What have we got here?"

  "A drill. It's gotta be a drill," said Grimm, reaching for a phone.

  "Maintainance, we in a test mode?" he barked into the receiver.

  The reply was surreally flat. "No, sir."

  "Training mode, then?"

  "No. Everything's up. Everything's running."

  Captain Grimm lowered the phone with a trembling hand.

  "It's gotta be a glitch in the software," he said.

  "Sir, the software confirms that the unknown is ballistic."

  "Oh, my God! Launch point?"

  "The system can't pinpoint, sir. It's a ground launch. Point of origin beyond our operating parameters."

  "Ground! Then why are we dealing with it? Where's Spacetrack? This is their responsibility. They should already have this thing in inventory and be feeding it to us."

  "I don't know, sir," said the lieutenant, looking at the Object Table display. "But it's heading for the east coast."

  "We gotta call it. High, medium, or low?"

  "We can't go low. There's definitely something up there."

  "Threat or nonthreat?"

  "It's not a known missile, but it's ballistic. I'd go high."

  "High it is," said Captain Grimm, hitting the high-confidence button that alerted the entire complex that they had a real situation. He tapped a key, touched the screen with his lightpen, and an expanded outline of the U.S. filled his screen. On the lower east coast a glowing green circle encompassed an area from North Carolina to New York City. As the inexorably moving U on the other screen inched across the Atlantic, and the software steadily computed the probable impact point, the circle shrank. "Could be Washington," the lieutenant said in a shaky voice.

  "There's only one object. It has to be Washington," Grimm rasped. "They must be crazy to launch only one object." He reached for the direct line to NORAD.

  Deep in the North American Air Defense Command's Cheyenne Mountain complex, the Air Force general designated as CINCNORAD put down his red telephone. He looked out the Plexiglas of his command booth at status officers hunched over computer consoles like space-age scriveners. On the huge status panel overlooking the room, a blinking green object showed above a simulated horizon. It was larger than a warhead but smaller than a missile. And it was coming down fast. There was no time to think, never mind identify the unknown. Trembling, he picked up the White House hot line and asked for the President.

  The President of the United States snored happily. It had been one of the great days in his life. He could hardly wait to get up the next morning to tackle the challenge of the Oval Office. But even an eager new President had to sleep, and so he slept.

  He did not sleep long.

  Two Secret Service agents burst into the room.

  The President's wife bolted up from her pillows the instant the light clicked on. She reached for a dressing gown. Her fingertips grazed the pink chiffon briefly, and then one of the grim-faced Secret Service agents literally pulled her out of bed and hustled her out the door to a waiting elevator.

  The First Lady screamed.

  That woke the President. Seeing a hulking man looming over him, he asked a natural question.

  "What is it? What's happening?"

  "No time," the agent snapped. "It's for your own good, sir. Now, come with me, please."

  The President reached for the nightstand drawer, where a red telephone lay. The Secret Service agent plucked the receiver from his hand and picked him up bodily. The chief executive was carried out of his bedroom, his eyes on the red telephone as if it were water and he was lost in the Gobi Desert.

  The President was not set down until he was in the elevator. He stood in candy-cane pajamas, blinking rapidly. The Secret Service agents had faces that resembled cut stone. But they looked healthy compared to the face of the man carrying the aluminum suitcase. Sleepily the President tried to remember who the third man was. He could not. But he did remember the briefing when they had told him that the aluminum suitcase was called the "football" and it contained the special codes needed to launch America's nuclear arsenal.

  Then it dawned on the President that the elevator had passed the White House basement and kept on going-deep, deep into the sub-sub-sub-basement nearly a mile under impenetrable bedrock and lead radiation shielding, And he knew.

  "It's not fair," the President of the United States moaned. "This was going to be my first day in office!"

  At the PAVE PAWS station at Robbins Air Force Base, Captain Grimm watched as the green circle shrank remorselessly, like a closing noose. It became the size of a half-dollar. Then a quarter. Then a nickel. Before it irised down to the size of a dime, a letter I appeared directly over Washington, D. C.-and then there could be no question about the point of impact.

  The green circle squeezed into a dot and froze like a dead man's pupil.

  "That's it," Grimm said huskily. "Washington is gone." He felt drained. Then he remembered to pull up his pants.

  The precise point of impact was Lafayette Park, directly in front of the White House. The naked trees were rimed with late-January ice. It was exactly 3:13 A.M., so the park was deserted.

  Washington, D.C. woke up to a sonic boom mixed with a noise like a tape of a car-crashin
g machine being played back at high speed. The ground jumped. The tremors were felt as far away as Alexandria, Virginia.

  White steam hung over the hole in Lafayette Park. It was not a large hole, perhaps fifteen feet in diameter. But the superheated air escaping from the pit instantly melted the ice off the trees and turned the hard-frozen ground into the consistency of oatmeal and created billows of steam.

  First on the scene was a police cruiser. It pulled up and two patrolmen spilled out. They approached the hole, which glowed cherry red, but the heat beat them back. After some discussion, they called it in as a brush fire. That brought the fire department.

  Firemen lugged hoses as close as they could and poured water down the hole. That was a mistake. The water turned to steam. Those closest to the pit were scalded and had to be rushed to the hospital. The hoses were dragged back and, from a safer distance, the firemen tried again.

  The next jets of water brought more steam. From deep within the hole there came loud snapping and hissing like water on a skillet magnified a thousand times. For several hours the Washington fire department sprayed water into the hole. Every hour, there was less steam. Gradually the cherry glow turned dull orange, then yellow. Finally it faded altogether.

  The fire chief put on an oxygen mask and, carrying a heavy flashlight, approached the edge of the pit. He lay on his stomach and peered down. The rising air hit his exposed brow with tropical humidity. He turned on the flashlight.

  The hole was much deeper than he'd expected. Whatever had hit, it had impacted with incredible force. The bottom of the pit was very black and buried under a foot of water. There was no way to discern what lay under the water, although the fire chief spent the better part of twenty minutes trying. He gave up when he leaned over too far and the flashlight jerked from his hand. It disappeared in the water.

  It was nearly dawn by the time an Air Force investigation team arrived. They wore white anti-contamination suits and raced around the now-quiescent hole with clicking Geiger counters. The counters picked up only normal background radiation. The suits came off and heavy equipment was brought up as the firemen were ordered to vacate the site by a two-star general.